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I have a 90 year old wooden frame with quite a bit of decorative carving. The wood has several layers of paint. Sanding will be extremely difficult with the intricate carving details, and may do more damage than good. What is your advice for removing the paint to the bare wood? Will soaking it down in paint thinner and removing continuously work?

I prefer a heat gun for most paint removal. However if you are not skill at heat gunning, iI would not try a picture frame. You will burn it. I have a lot of experience with heat guns and I woudl probably still use chemicals.

There are several execellent products. Some work better on different kinds of paint and wood.

"Peel away" is the easist to use, but only works sometimes. The only place to buy it that i have seen is in the back of Old House Journal. You spread it on, cover it with paper, wait then peel away the paper the goo and the paint together. When it works, it is wonderful. Sometimes it does not work at all and creates a mess.

Cirtus Strip is less caustic than many others but works less often. Still it is a decent product.

Grandpa's or ** (I will fill this in when I think of the name, I think it srts wth a T) are highly caustic.There are several brand names for hte same chemical. They come in a metal can becuase they will eat through anything selse. It is a gel, not a liquid. Put it on and wait fifteen minutes and then scrap the paint right off. Do not let it dry out. If you need to soak longer, cover it with tin foil. Sometimes it strips so clean it is stain ready. It burns like heck if you get the tiniest drop on your skin (once got a drop in my eye, thought I would die). When you first get a drop on you, it does nto hurt and you think you are ok. After a while it starts to burn, then it gets worse and worse. Wash it off immediately and you will be fine. Once you start to feel it, you are in for some hurting. Even if you wash it off once you feel it, it will continue to burn. You need to wash it off before you feel the burn.

However that stuff works work great. You have to be really careful with it though. The fumes are also toxic (carcinogen) and I think flammable.

There was another product that I bought at a paint store. It is non caustic. It says that you can apply it with your bare hands. (You can). It only worked once for us (on brick). It made the paint harder to remove on the other times we used it.

Sorry I cannot remember the names.

Paint thinnier is not likely to do anything benficial. It is for cleaning paint brushes and thinning paint that is not yet applied.

Jasco. That is the stuff i could not remember. It does not start with a T. However I think that none of the other brands of the same thing does start with a T.

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